Humble Bundle: greatest sale of indie games ever?

Starting today, you can name your price for a game bundle that includes some …

A group of indie developers are selling a package of their games which includes some of the biggest independent games on the market. Gamers can name their own price—from 1¢ to $1,000—for a pack of games that would go for around $80 if sold separately. Anyone who buys the package can feel better about themselves as well; customers can send any amount of their purchases to two major nonprofit groups.

The sale, nicknamed the "Humble Bundle" by the studios involved, is certainly epic. The games included in the package are World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru, Aquaria, and Penumbra Overture. Each of these titles has proven to be a solid hit, and the fact that five separate studios are working together to make them available to gamers for however much they wish to spend is unusual. As Jeff Rosen of Wolfire explained to Ars in a recent interview, the close-knit sense of community among indie developers is largely responsible for the sale's existence.

Small beginnings

The idea for the sale had humble origins. There wasn't any formal plan by the different developers to get together; it was something that seemed to come about from a moment of inspiration. "It was really one of those 'a-ha!' moments," said Rosen. "We recently teamed up with the Natural Selection 2 guys to do a bundle promotion, which was influenced by Steam's indie bundles, and that was a huge success. So I was kind of brainstorming about what we could do to top that, and this idea came about. Everyone in the promotion is 100 percent independent, and we are all buddies, so it only took a few emails to organize the whole thing."

This sense of community is seemingly common among indie developers. Rosen says that while the Game Developers Conference helps small studios build relationships with one another, it is only the beginning. Calling Ron Carmel of 2D Boy a friend certainly helps, too. "We really look up to Ron Carmel... and he pretty much knows all indie developers," Rosen said, though he was quick to point out how Internet communities help, too. "There are a lot of indie forums, and mailing lists, so most indies have really easy access to each other."

Bundles are increasingly more popular with indie developers; as we recently saw with 2D Boy's "pay what you want" sale of World of Goo. "All of the technology is here now, so it's feasible for indie developers to do something like this," Rosen explained. He went on to show an example of this affordable environment: "We recently wrote a blog post on our system, which got [around] 300,000 hits, and Google charged us 11¢ for the traffic. So you no longer need to have access to expensive, beefy hardware and professional sysadmins to put on promotions like this. Thanks to PayPal, Amazon Payments, and Google Checkout, we don't have to be massive merchants to accept credit cards."

Great indie games, great nonprofits

This sale is different from those held by indie developers in the past: aside from the number of major indie studios involved, it's tied to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play, two of the biggest nonprofits in the video game industry. "I wanted to include [both nonprofits] for a couple of reasons," Rosen said.

"First of all, they are truly awesome causes. Child's Play's mission to bring video games to children in hospitals is really worthwhile, especially given the anti-video game sentiment [often present in the public]. [The EFF] resonates strongly with the anti-DRM message of the humble bundle and fights many good fights. I know that many people are going to donate one penny to the bundle to get all of the games, but maybe by having the charities involved, people will at least give a fiver to Child's Play."

That's another unusual thing about this sale: customers can choose exactly how much of their money goes where. According to Rosen, "this promo has no middle man (other than your choice of PayPal, Google, or Amazon to process the payment) and you can choose exactly where you want the donation to go. You could snub all the developers—and the EFF—and just give to Child's Play; we would still happily give you all of our games for all three platforms, DRM-free."

What will happen if people refuse to send their money to the developers themselves and instead send it to either Child's Play or the EFF? "That is a possibility," Rosen said. "Even if no one donates to the developers, and they give 100 percent to charity, I would consider that a success."

The developers go out of their way to make the games accessible to a broad audience; they "work great" on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. And they're DRM-free: "Feel free to play them without an Internet connection, back them up, and install them on all of your Macs and PCs freely."

There is no downside here: gamers get a great selection of indie titles, the developers enjoy a nice bit of publicity, and two very worthy causes are supported. If you'd like to play some games, and support the developers and/or nonprofits, there are much worse ways to spend your money.